Cyber Incident Victim: Tate High School
Date:
Aug 2019
Location:
United States of America
Summary
A mother employed as an assistant principal and her high school-aged daughter were arrested for unlawfully accessing hundreds of student accounts in a school district’s information system. The mother exploited her authorized access to the FOCUS platform, enabling herself and her daughter—a student at Tate High School—to manipulate homecoming court voting by casting fraudulent votes linked to their devices. The daughter reportedly used her mother’s credentials to vote repeatedly, with 246 illegitimate votes traced to their IP addresses. Additionally, the mother’s account improperly accessed records of 372 high school students, predominantly from the same school, over a period of time. Both face felony charges including computer offenses, unlawful use of communications devices, and criminal use of personal information.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 2 motives | 1 technique |
| Threat Actor | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 actor | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
The incident involving Tate High School emerged from unauthorized access to the Escambia County School District’s student information system, FOCUS, perpetrated by Laura Rose Carroll, an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School, and her 17-year-old daughter, a Tate High School student. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) arrested both individuals on March 16, 2021, following an investigation initiated in November 2020 after the school district reported suspicious activity. Carroll, who possessed district-level administrative access to FOCUS, exploited her credentials to facilitate unauthorized intrusions, despite complying with mandatory password updates every 45 days and completing annual technology use training. Her daughter leveraged this access to manipulate Tate High School’s Homecoming Court voting in October 2020, casting 246 fraudulent votes—117 of which originated from a single IP address within a short timeframe. Multiple students corroborated the daughter’s admission of using her mother’s account to influence the election.
Investigators traced the unauthorized logins to Carroll’s cell phone and residential computers, revealing a broader pattern of misconduct dating back to August 2019. During this period, Carroll’s FOCUS account accessed 372 high school student records, 339 of which belonged to Tate High School attendees. The scope of the intrusions included the extraction of personally identifiable information, though the specific use of this data beyond the Homecoming vote manipulation was not detailed in available reports. FDLE charged both subjects with third-degree felonies for offenses against computer users, unlawful use of communications devices, and criminal use of personal information, plus a first-degree misdemeanor for conspiracy. Carroll was booked into the Escambia County Jail with an $8,500 bond, while her daughter was detained at the Escambia Regional Juvenile Detention Center. The school district’s cooperation with law enforcement enabled the identification and containment of the breach, though no additional remedial actions by the district were disclosed.